What the phoque! Are you as offended by this clip as I am?

The big talk in the franco media over the past 24 hours has been all about this video clip posted on YouTube late last week designed to blast the Harper government over its culture cuts. And it’s a very funny clip. But it also happens to get it all wrong and, in the process, figures the best way to get people’s attention is by turning us anglos into the bad guys (yet again!).

First, have a look at the clip:

So singer-songwriter Michel Rivard turns up in front of this Heritage Canada committee to ask for funding for his little festival and he tries to explain the concept to these unilingual anglos by playing the Rivard-penned La complainte du phoque en Alaska, a classic from his old band Beau Dommage. The problem is the folks on the committee – with the lead guys played by Benoit Briere and Stéphane Rousseau – just hear the word “phoque” and go ballistic. The point? They’re dumb unilingual anlgos who can’t speak French, don’t know Beau Dommage, have never heard of Rivard and clearly have contempt for franco culture. (How weird is it that francophone actors play the nasty anglos? Don’t even go there.)

There is only one small problem here – language has nothing to do with the culture-cuts story. Artists are just as angry in Toronto as they are in Montreal. In fact, many of the top English-Canadian cultural types will be at a press conference in Toronto Wednesday denouncing the $45 million in culture cuts recently delivered by the Harper regime. This is not about anglos stomping on franco culture. Did the folks who made this clip – who are hiding under the cloak of anonymity for the moment – notice that the Heritage Minister happily making the cuts – and saying the public supports her – is a francophone MP from Quebec City?

This is an issue that artists across the country agree on and it is NOT a French-English thing and to portray it as such is dishonest with gusts up to downright hysterical and anglophobic. I recently talked to great Toronto filmmaker, screenwriter and actor Don McKellar – English guy, if you’re wondering – and he was really quite upset about these cuts. So is Gilles Vigneault. Which is great. Finally we’ve got something that unites the two solitudes. But don’t try to blame this one on les maudits blokes. Apparently a quarter of million people have already seen this clip, meaning this wrong-headed disturbing message is top of the hit parade in Quebec, re-inforcing the worst sort of stereotypes about us anglos.

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